Getting our Wikimedian-in-Residence going
In early 2023, we were delighted to be one of the successful recipients of a Wikimedia Australia Partnership Projects grant. We’re using this funding to fund a Wikipedian-in-Residence for three months to work with our teams to improve and expand how we use Wikidata within our website. We’re especially keen to highlight and celebrate First Nations, culturally diverse, women and non-binary screen creators in ACMI’s collection and associated programming, and to explore opportunities for how ACMI collection records might contribute to Wikidata and Wikicommons.
How does ACMI currently use Wikidata?
ACMI currently uses Wikidata in two ways. We use a Wikidata importer in XOS (eXperience Operating System) that adds data to empty Creator fields (e.g., date of birth, date of death, places of operation, Wikipedia link, image, also known as (other names)). We also use an importer that adds Wikidata IDs to XOS Works listings.
And, in 2018, we partnered with Wikimedia on an edit-a-thon to enhance the Wikipedia pages of museums in Victoria.
We have previously worked with Paul Duchesne on additional Wikidata initiatives building on the above use cases. For instance, a URL expander that converts different ACMI IDs to ACMI website page links, which we then used to build a workflow that updates ACMI Web IDs stored in Wikidata from our old collections website, to our new one. Paul is going to continue working with us on this project as our Wikipedian-in-Residence.
What is ACMI’s Partnership Project about?
Our grant application started from an existing project we were working with Wikimedia Australia on, an edit-a-thon timed to coincide with our Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibition, Goddess: Power, Glamour, Rebellion. The Wikimedia Australia team spent the day teaching a group of volunteers how to edit Wikipedia and improve articles about the Australian women and gender-transcending superstars of cinema featured in Goddess. This is critical work: as of May 2023, less than 20% of English Wikipedia’s biographies are about women. With ten volunteers joining us over the day, we contributed to improving 24 Wikipedia pages, making 116 edits, adding 59 references and 5,000 words.
The Partnership Projects grant will help us build on this initiative through funding a Wikipedian-in-Residence who will work with our team to help ACMI (a) improve and expand how we use Wikidata within the website to highlight and celebrate First Nations, culturally diverse, women and non-binary screen creators in ACMI’s collection and associated programming, and (b) explore how ACMI collection items that are out of copyright might be embedded within Wikicommons.
Key to the success of these initiatives will be the Wikipedian-in-Residence’s engagement with ACMI teams to build editing capacity across the museum to ensure initiatives and learnings are sustainably embedded within existing workflows such as documentation and cataloguing into the future. Our intention is to increase the number of ACMI staff equipped as Wikipedia editors over the course of the partnership and beyond to support these goals.
Why is this project important?
ACMI’s vision is to build a vibrant, diverse connected society of screen literate and technologically skilled watchers and players, and a thriving ecology of creative makers. Ensuring these makers — particularly those from historically marginalised backgrounds — are acknowledged, visible, and celebrated is critical to achieving this vision.
This project’s alignment with Goddess offers a unique opportunity to focus audience attention on these critical creators. We are, however, committed to shining a light on First Nations, culturally diverse, women and non-binary creators in the screen industries year-round, and so the project will also include development of a work plan that extends beyond Paul’s work with us, to ensure project learnings are on-going and embedded within ACMI’s workflows moving forward.
ACMI has also set the ambitious target that by 2028, your museum will be a globally recognised hub that connects people, communities, technology and ideas to shape our futures. By improving and increasing our use of Wikidata and exploring the possibilities for our collections to likewise improve and expand Wikicommons, this project will directly contribute to this target.
We’re excited to continue this journey and will publish our learnings here as we go.
